Canadian Humanitarian NGO & Canadian Lobster Fisherman involved In Water & Drip Irrigation Community Development in Mali, West Africa. Living Stories. Listening To Stories. Looking for Moments & Memories. Writes very poorly, and is oh so struggling to balance two very different lives.

Taxicab Spirituality – Human Suffering

​Today, I ​chatted about human suffering with a random taxi driver in Bamako, Mali.

There was a woman begging with two small children at a very busy intersection in Bamako, one child nearly got hit by a car right beside us.

My heart was in my mouth as it all unfolded so rapidly, just meters away. The two foot high toddler ran fast enough to barely clear the potential tragedy.

I commented about how so many people suffer through difficult lives.

There was silence for a moment. Then after some reflection the taximan simply, and softly utters,

“Vraiment!”

Truly!

Malians are a very religious minded people, so it caused no tension when I shared that i thought God cares for the suffering of people. He is not at all distant from people’s pain, as some seem to think. This is why we can pray to him for those suffering ones, and about our own pain also.

He kind of ooked at me when I said this, wanting to say something, but he didn’t. Most taximen have learned to have a tight lip.

I asked him if he was a good Muslim.

He said we was.

I asked him if he would pray for me…. and I would pray for him too…

He never really answered the question.

However, Allah must have heard and answered his prayer for the suffering ones, since he did not have change for my 1500 cfa taxi fare (a common game here) so I had to leave him with my 2000 cfa.

Glad i could help alleviate his suffering. I’ve never really seen myself as the source of an answered Allah prayer before. Hummmm.

I’d have preferred for the woman with the children to have gotten that 500 cfa rather than him via a shafted taxi bonus.

Goes to show neither of us are probably that good at our respective spiritualities.

I’m a bad pilgrim for not giving the lady something. So maybe God made me put my money where my mouth was in another way perhaps?

He might be a poor Muslim also, for not giving his extra fare grab to the needy lady.

The young taxi man who drove me from the airport last night, is homeless.

He is the nephew of a friend who shared with me today that his nephew lives and sleeps out of his taxi on the dirty streets of Bamako. Great life.

Some people suffer, and so badly.

While we are happy to existentially chat about it….. in a taxicab.

“The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them ANY TIME you want.” ~Jesus

J. R.R. TOLKIEN – PEACE IS NEVER FREE

"………….. and there in that pleasant corner of the world they plied their well-ordered business of living, and they heeded less and less the world outside where dark things moved, until they came to think that peace and plenty were the rule in Middle-earth and the right of all sensible folk. They forgot or ignored what little they had ever known of the Guardians, and of the labours of those that made possible the long peace of the Shire. They were, in fact, sheltered, but they had ceased to remember it."
J. R.R. Tolkien "The Fellowship of the Ring" , 1985, George & Allen & Urwin Pub LTD(Page 22-23 prologue)

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Pictures

Photo is attributed as, “The Graves Of A Catholic Woman And Her Protestant Husband Seperated By A Wall, Holland, 1888.”

Bones placed in Animistic Religious Ritual

Jean Claude spreading already fermented coco out to dry.

My son Ted with me on a return trip to Ivory Coast in 2009. His first time back in Ivory coast since his childhood. Coffee drying.

Some of my coco growing friends. A happy reunion in 2009. Man I miss these guys.

90 km In the Bush.Doing Drought Season Drip Irrigated Gardens.

View From the Pier in Segou.

Farming tools have not changed for these people for 300 years.

Our orange lady, who passed away.

By the Baffond on Niaradougou. By the Potato fields.

Road to Bankagooma Land

Storage Granery for Millet to feed the family though 9 months of drought in Sahel.